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A new plan for water management – for 2015 and beyond

ICPDR Danube Watch: The first ever management plan for the Danube River Basin has been drafted, describing
the significant pressures that affect the region and some real solutions
to meet the requirements of the EU Water Framework Directive in 2015 and for
the years to come.

A new plan for water management –
for 2015 and beyond

The first ever management plan for the Danube River Basin has been drafted, describing
the significant pressures that affect the region and some real solutions
to meet the requirements of the EU Water Framework Directive in 2015 and for
the years to come.

The Danube River Basin
Management Plan gives
the first-ever detailed
basin-wide picture of how
pressures in the region
will be addressed.

It’s been nine years in the making, but a management
plan for the Danube and its tributaries
demonstrates an innovative approach for basinwide
issues by offering up answers to the pressures
and impacts on water status in the region
in the form of a Joint Programme of Measures
– for some 20,000 river kilometres. The Danube
River Basin Management Plan, a draft of which
was completed this May, is a result of fifteen contracting
parties focusing their efforts to achieve
shared goals.

The ICPDR has been working toward this Plan since
the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) came into
force in 2000. The WFD requires all EU Member
States to ensure the ‘good status’ of all surface and
ground waters by 2015. In addition, the WFD insists
on the development of international river basin management
plans to assist in reaching those goals.

While obligatory for all EU Member States, all other
Danube countries committed themselves to implementing
the Directive, and the ICPDR was made the facilitating platform, with meeting
the goals of the WFD its
highest priority.

Back to river units. The first
step toward drafting the plan
was the production of the Danube
Basin Analysis 2004. The
first comprehensive analysis of
the entire river basin, the DBA
looked at characterisation, impacts
of human activities and
economic aspects of water uses
in the Danube Basin, and described
which water bodies are
at risk of failing the WFD environmental
objectives by 2015.
Furthermore, the Danube Basin
Analysis enabled the identification of four significant water
management issues that can directly
or indirectly affect the
quality of surface and groundwater
bodies:

pollution by organic
substances

pollution by nutrients

pollution by hazardous
substances

pressures from hydromorphological
alterations.

Addressing transboundary
issues. The Danube River
Basin Management Plan provides
a description of each of
the significant pressures in the
basin corresponding to each
significant water management
issue, and responds to each
with visions and management
objectives.

“This is a major outcome, as
it gives a detailed basin-wide
picture for the first time of the
most urgent management issues in detail,” says Marieke
van Nood of the European Commission Environment
Directorate-General, and Co-chair of the
ICPDR’s River Basin Management Expert Group. “But
it also identifies areas where more work is needed in
the future, such as sediments.”

Though the draft plan includes preliminary data only,
it presents results of the water status assessment, and
whether or not the WFD objectives of ‘good status/potential’ will be met for specific water bodies. “Data collection was a huge task for all involved and the Danube
countries worked hard to deliver the best data
available,” says Knut Beyer of the German Federal Ministry
for the Environment, Nature Conservation and
Nuclear Safety, and Co-chair of the ICPDR’s River
Basin Management Expert Group. “But serious gaps
still exist.”

The management plan also includes an overview of
monitoring networks, a final designation of Heavily
Modified Water Bodies, exemptions applied under
WFD article 4(4) & 4(5), an economic analysis of water
uses, an inventory of protected areas and a brief overview
of water quantity and climate change issues.

A plan for the whole basin. The entire process has reflected the joint cooperation from all Danube countries,
as well as the input from stakeholders across the
whole river basin. Public participation has been built
into every stage of development, and a draft of the
management plan was available for public consultation
since May until the end of July 2009.

“One of the commonly stressed necessities with regard
to water management is that people have to think
‘outside the water box’, taking into account a broad
range of views and interests while implementing ‘Integrated
Water Resource Management’,” says Raimund
Mair of the Austrian Federal Ministry for Agriculture,
Forestry, Environment and Water Management. “It
is essential to gain the thinking and contributions of
representatives from various sectors with different
backgrounds already during the drafting process of
the plan.”

To encourage face-to face input, the ICPDR held its
Second Stakeholder Conference in Bratislava in June,
bringing together a broad spectrum of stakeholders,
and the comments will be integrated in the final Plan
where appropriate (see article on page 20).

Putting the plan into action. With the first draft of the
management plan complete, the ICPDR’s River Basin
Management Expert Group will continue to revise it
until December. At that time, the final version will
go before the Heads of Delegation to the ICPDR for
approval at the 12th Ordinary Meeting. Once approved,
the Danube River Basin Management Plan with
its Joint Programme of Measures will go into effect. A
Ministerial Meeting on the plan will be held in February
2010, and all the Danube countries will start work
on making the plan a reality.